Former West Ham United, Norwich City and QPR goalkeeper Rob Green has been speaking ahead of the playoff final about his predictions for who will reach the Premier League.
This weekend sees last season’s beaten finalists, Brentford, up against Swansea City at Wembley Stadium. Green, who first played in a playoff final at the Millennium Stadium in 2002 for Norwich, thinks that experience will be key when it comes to deciding this result.
“Brentford have lessons that they’d have learned from last season’s playoff defeat,” Green said of the Bees. “They didn’t really turn up and Fulham managed the game. That’s what these big games are all about: managing the game. Managing yourself, managing the environment and the opposition.”
“And if you can do that better - it’s very rare that you get a team like Blackpool, where Ian Holloway sends them out full of emotion and they come out all guns blazing in a five or six-goal thriller. It’s more likely to be that the team that can manage the game within their group is the team that will come out on top.”
“That would suggest that last season’s experience should help them - but also, they are the league’s third-best team. It’s one that, for me, leans towards Brentford.”
Green who eventually got promoted twice via the play-offs - in 2012 and 2014 - has recently teamed up with Dean Windass to highlight the small changes that football fans can make around the home to save money and energy. The initiative, in association with Smart Energy GB, found that of all the play-off sides across the EFL, Blackpool came out on top for being the most environmentally friendly.
“We filmed different ideas of how you can save energy around the house,” Green explains of the campaign. “Me and Dean Windass - who’s a bit of a character - were mucking around in a house, trying basic ideas, like turning your heating down by a degree, not filling the kettle up as much.”
“We’ve learned out of the playoff teams that Blackpool are the most environmentally aware and they’ve done their bits to change their habits, including dropping single-use plastics.”
“But it’s just getting that routine, learning those habits. The key thing is getting a smart meter, which is getting the physical feedback on how much energy and money you save.”
Visit smartenergygb.org to find out more.
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